The New Frontier

The shores of Syria lie fewer than 100 nautical miles away, Turkey is to the north, and the great ghost town of Famagusta is closer still: it is only a small stretch of sea off the coast of Cyprus but its status as a favoured route for illegal immigrants has been further raised by the island's accession to the EU on May 1. It is here, in the dead of night, that many illegal migrants pass from the Middle East to the EU.

Inspector Panicos Nicolaou peers at the fuzzy green signals crawling across the radar screen of his cruiser patrol, the sleek Akamas; his assistants stare at the horizon.

"Usually they come in tiny fishing boats," says the port marine officer as a flag-laden vessel crammed with tourists from the nearby resort of Ayia Napa chugs by. "But no matter how small the boat, it will show up on this screen."

As the newly enlarged Europe's easternmost outpost, Cyprus has become one of the union's frontline states in the battle against illegal immigration. Brussels considered the reinforcement of the island's coastal defences and detection network a crucial condition of EU membership.

"Cyprus has a unique geostrategic position at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which is why it plays such a very, very important role in the fight against illegal immigration," says the ambassador Andriaan Van der Meer, who heads the EU's representation on the island. "Precisely because its borders are also external EU borders , we paid specific attention to the measures that would be taken to strengthen the frontiers during the course of accession talks," he told Guardian Unlimited.

Immigration officials say émigrés, often fleeing appalling conditions back home, are increasingly choosing Cyprus, the wealthiest of the bloc's 10 new member states, not just as a transit country but as a place in which to build a new future.

Since joining the EU, Greek Cypriots have beefed up their border controls as never before, recently taking delivery of two more super-fast patrol boats from Italy.

"We've invested in radar from Israel, bought helicopters and a plane, doubled our marine port staff," says Chief Superintendent Theodoros Theodorides, who heads the aliens and immigration department in Nicosia, the island's divided capital. "We have also dramatically increased patrols with the Turkish-occupied north because that's where a lot of these people appear to be coming through."

Patrols like Inspector Nicolaou's now work night and day, around the clock. The gleaming marine police station in Paralimni, out of which he and his 26-strong team operate, opened barely two months ago. But Cyprus's continued division between Turks in the north and Greeks in the south has not helped it in its new role of regional policeman.

If the boat people do make it as far as the island they usually head for the breakaway Turkish republic, where rules and regulations are much more lax, according to immigration officers.

"A lot of the boats head for Famagusta," says Nicolaou, pointing to the town's eerie skyline, its dead and empty buildings staring out to sea. "Smugglers know that if they get there, they are probably safe. As the [partitioning] green line runs into the sea our job is to stop them before they cross it by keeping them out in international waters. Then we inform Interpol when the boats start heading for Greece and Italy."

For years Nicosia denied it was even a transit point for illegal immigrants; recently, however, the Italian interior ministry estimated that as many as 50,000 Europe-bound illicit migrants pass through open waters off the island every year.

"After Italy's", says Giorgos Frangos, deputy commander of port and marine police on Cyprus, "these are without doubt some of the most dangerous seas in the EU. Our location at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the Arab world makes us very vulnerable - more so than even Poland and the Baltic states."

Ambassador Van der Meer refuses to be drawn on whether Cyprus poses a bigger threat in terms of illegal immigration for the EU than some of the union's other new entrants, but he concedes that the Cypriot authorities have taken tough and "pretty successful" measures to prevent a potential influx. This year illegal migrants already on the island were also targeted as part of the concerted crackdown.

An estimated 40,000 immigrants are said to have settled illicitly in the former British colony in addition to the 40,000 who are officially registered. While a third work as household domestics, the rest are involved primarily in the tourist industry, holding jobs that have helped boost Cyprus's productivity and make its economy one of the most robust in the EU. Between January and March, a record 1,000, mainly from the developing world, were rounded up and arrested.

Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, claims Cyprus has also seen the largest increase in asylum seekers of any of the bloc's 10 new member states. Requests for asylum from those who say they are fleeing political persecution jumped from 821 in 2002 to 4,036 last year, according to Nicosia's immigration department. Although tiny in comparison with those in Britain or Germany, the increase was unprecedented for the island.

"On the basis of the applications we have examined so far, I can honestly say 99% are not genuine: they are economic migrants posing as political asylum seekers," the island's chief immigration officer, Anni Shakli, says. "They may come from Jordan, say, and claim they're Palestinians. It's very easy to test their knowledge of the country they claim to come from during an interview."

Shakli fears Cyprus "is bracing for a big increase" in illegal immigration from the Middle East, the Arab world and nearby Turkey. "It's very worrying," she says.

While it is unclear whether the vast majority harbour dreams of heading to the EU's richer, northern countries, what is certain is that a lot of the newcomers are arriving from the island's breakaway north. Once they are over the UN-patrolled green line and in the internationally recognised south, they can, under EU law, apply for asylum.

"Our big problem is with the north," adds Chief Superintendent Theodorides at the immigration department in Nicosia. "There is a lot of evidence that people smuggling has taken off big time over there."

Since the self-declared statelet eased travel restrictions in April 2003, the flow of migrants across the green line has become a growth industry, say other immigration officials, citing police interviews; most of the émigrés requesting asylum pose as ethnic Kurds before it is discovered during inspection procedures that they are mainland Turks, Iraqis, Iranians and Syrians, says Shakli.

Under pressure from the EU, Cyprus has also clamped down with an iron fist on student visas being issued to applicants from developing countries. As a result applications have dwindled noticeably this year.

"We realised that the system was being abused," Shakli says. "A lot were coming here, quickly abandoning their studies and then travelling to other parts of the EU on tourist visas. Now applicants are interviewed by a migration officer in their home country before they are given a visa."

Policing the borders of the EU is a chore few Cypriots thought they would ever have to do. Few appear to relish it. "You see these people and you feel really sorry for them: after all, they are not criminals," laments Inspector Nicolaou.

"Not long ago, we stopped two boats heading towards Famagusta with women and babies. It was awful. But the dreadful truth is, if we started bending the rules, this place would be flooded with migrants - and that's unacceptable in the EU."